Referred Pain

Jan 22, 2012 11:48

Sometimes, pain happens in your body but it manifests somewhere else.

Post-surgery, almost every time I eat, I get immediate stabbing pain in my left shoulder. This probably would have been creepier if one of my GERD symptoms from the last 18 months hadn't been stabbing chest pain (center of chest).

My mom kept mentioning that "referred pain" is a thing, but I didn't feel better about it until I googled it.

And, true facts, pain in a person's diaphragm can show up in someone's left shoulder, because the two areas share a nerve or something. (Science/medicine is not my area, even though it's kind of my profession.)

"Referred pain" seems like it could be a great metaphor when applied to other things in life, but I'm too tired to write anything grandiose about it just now.

pain, bodies, surgery

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